Eli5:why we use the solar calendar instead of the lunar calendar?
In: Planetary Science
Solar calendars are superior entirely because they’re built around the relative motion and position of the Sun in the sky, which is important because, up until the industrial revolution, quite literally *everything* in human society inevitably derived it’s energy from Sunlight. Sure humans didn’t quite *know* that at the time, but they could obviously see the correlation between the Sun taking up certain positions in the sky and the crops growing again.
Lunar calendars don’t map cleanly to anything useful in human society, at least not over long time frames. The real value is just that, as a clock, the moon is a lot easier to read than the sun simply because looking at the moon won’t obliterate your corneas. In addition, while lunar calendars suck for timekeeping over hundreds of solar years…they’re not terrible for shorter time frames because you still end up getting 12 lunar cycles per year.
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